Does negative Online word-of-mouth influence consumer negatively?

Extensive studies focused on Word-of-Mouth (WOM) as an effectively persuasive communication and proved that negative WOM is more powerful than positive WOM. Diffusion of Internet makes the dispersion of WOM faster and wider than typical WOM. This paper aims to study if there was stronger negative influence of negative WOM online and to study how to lead and control the influence of negative WOM on Internet. After reviewed relevant literatures concerning WOM, attribution theory and brand attitude, this paper proposed a framework to explore how negative online WOM (negative WOM and two-sided WOM) influences on consumers' brand attitude by taking WOM attribution as a moderate variable. The results showed that there is no difference between influence of negative WOM and two-sided WOM on brand attitude. Further study found that different valence of negative WOM influenced on brand attitude differently after considering the moderate effect of WOM attribution. Influence of different valence of negative WOM are insignificant difference if receivers attribute negative information to external reason such as personal bias, whereas their influence are significant difference if receivers attribute negative information to internal cause such as weakness of brand.